This week, for example, while thinking about the pope’s take on global warming, I tweeted out this comment: “Celebrate climate change, an externality of the greatest poverty destroying program in the history of mankind.” There is plenty to disagree with in my observation, I admit. Although I believe what I wrote to be true, I sent it out partly to elicit exactly the sort of reaction my tweet got—one person calling me a psychopath (a Slate writer, not some anonymous critic) and the other calling me sociopathic, among other things. I don’t mind the insults (perversely, in fact, I sort of enjoy them), but I do mind that the debate is over.

Conservatives might be ethically compromised, uninformed, or—if liberals are in a generous mood—mentally unstable, but they can’t be for real. At least, that’s the sense I increasingly get from the Left these days. Blame it on social media.